posted January 03, 2013 02:15 PM            

Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving
Lock me in delight awhile;
Let some pleasing dreams beguile
All my fancies, that from hence
There may steal an influence,
All my powers of care bereaving.

Tho' but a shadow, but a sliding,
Let me know some little joy.
We, that suffer long annoy,
Are contented with a thought
Thro' an idle fancy wrought:
O let my joys have some abiding.

posted January 03, 2013 08:03 PM            

Music, When Soft Voices Die

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts when thou are gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

posted January 05, 2013 02:48 AM            

♪♫♪"Sigh No More, Ladies..." ♪

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh nor more;
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never;
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo,
Or dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey, nonny, nonny.

posted January 05, 2013 07:52 AM            

@ Saturnine:

Have you seen the beginning of Much Ado About Nothing?

I love this~ starting at 00:25

Sigh No More, Ladies

posted January 05, 2013 08:00 AM            

It was fifty years ago
In the pleasant month of May,
In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,
A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: "Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee."

"Come, wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."

And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.

posted January 05, 2013 10:33 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Faith:
I love all these poems~ thank you so much, everyone, for contributing!

@ Saturnine:

Have you seen the beginning of Much Ado About Nothing?

I love this~ starting at 00:25

Sigh No More, Ladies

---

I love this thread! haha <3

@ Faith ~ yes ma'am~ I was known as the "Shakespeare-girl" in my school years, that's how well known my fandom was among my classmates, that each Valentine's day when the students would give each other roses or cards or chocolates... I would get Shakespeare-inspired gifts from the girls~ lmao =X yup~ I... was the "romantic" one.

Much Ado About Nothing is my favourite of his works, favourite over all, but I do like King Lear, and I can still remember all my lines from Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, and even quite a few from Julius Caesar! When it comes to poetry I can remember so much, but in everything else I seem to be forgetting everything haha~! (should I put everything in iambic pentameter to make it stick, I wonder!?) lol

I love theatre, and oh yes... that version they had on Masterpiece Theatre, I remember watching it there, anyway! haha xD I adore seeing Emma Thompson play Beatrice, don't you? She did an amazing job~ haha of course Branagh opposite, he can play any Shakespearean character, he's that good of an actor, and not hard on the eyes either... lol
That version is awesome cause it has Denzel, Keanu and even Kate B in it too though! =X talk about star-studded cast! ^_^;

One of my favourites... absolutely~

posted January 07, 2013 07:31 AM            

Let's talk a LOT about Shakespeare!

posted January 08, 2013 03:17 PM            

***

Here is a poem by William Carlos Williams..

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

******

I am sure everybody has read Daffodils by William Wordsworth. Daffodils is a most favourite poem of mine.

There is another poem by Wordsworth, I will share one stanza from it here, this stanza also happens to be the most famous one in all of the poem. The poem is Intimations of Immortality:

posted January 08, 2013 05:25 PM            

& adding here another favourite~ ^^; hmk!?
--------

A Failure

(She Speaks.)

I MEANT to be so strong and true!
The world may smile and question, When?
But what I might have been to you
I cannot be to other men.
Just one in twenty to the rest,
And all in all to you alone, -
This was my dream; perchance 'tis best
That this, like other dreams, is flown.

For you I should have been so kind,
So prompt my spirit to control,
To win fresh vigor for my mind,
And purer beauties for my soul;
Beneath your eye I might have grown
To that divine, ideal height,
Which, mating wholly with your own,
Our equal spirits should unite.

posted January 10, 2013 12:49 AM            

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~Dylan Thomas

posted January 11, 2013 01:41 PM            

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.

--James Agee (1909-1955)

Permit Me To Voyage
1934 Yale Press

posted January 14, 2013 03:52 AM            

Part Four: Time and Eternity
XLI

LET down the bars, O Death!
The tired flocks come in
Whose bleating ceases to repeat,
Whose wandering is done.

Thine is the stillest night,
Thine the securest fold;
Too near thou art for seeking thee,
Too tender to be told.

http://www.bartleby.com/113/4041.html

by Samuel Barber http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36cdq_0MDME

posted January 14, 2013 04:37 AM            

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
<b> And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more </b>,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

posted January 14, 2013 05:11 PM            

mirage, Barber is from my town. My father-in-law was superintendent of music for our school district, and he and Barber were acquaintances. You're the first person I've ever heard mention him outside my family; granted, I'm not musical myself.

I love Emily Dickinson. I've got this little one memorized:

The Clover's Simple Fame

The Clover's simple Fame
Remembered of the Cow --
Is better than enameled Realms
Of notability.
Renown perceives itself
And that degrades the Flower --
The Daisy that has looked behind
Has compromised its power --

posted January 15, 2013 12:11 AM            

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

posted January 15, 2013 04:58 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Faith:

mirage, Barber is from my town. My father-in-law was superintendent of music for our school district, and he and Barber were acquaintances. You're the first person I've ever heard mention him outside my family; granted, I'm not musical myself.

---

posted January 16, 2013 06:34 AM            

Pleasure of men and gods, you make all things beneath the dome
Of sliding constellations teem, you throng the fruited earth
And the ship-frighted sea- for every species come to birth
Consieved through you, and rises forth and gazes on the light.
The winds flee from you, Goddess, your arrival puts to flight
THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN,
For you, the crafty earth contrives sweet flowers,
For you, the oceans laugh, the skies peacful after showers,
Awash with light. For soon as morning wears the face of spring,
And the West Wind is free and freshens, warm and quickening,
The airy tribe of birds, O Holy One, is first to start heralding your approach,
Struck with your power through the heart;

Then beaasts, the wild and tame alike... so eagerly does each pant for you, so do they heed,
Caught in the chains of love, and follows you wherever you lead.

Of birds, and greening meadows, your delicous yearning goads
The breast of every creature, and you urge all things you find
Lustily to get new generations of their kind.
Because alone you steer the nature of things upon its course,
And nothing can arise without you on light's shining shores,
And nothing glad or lovely can be fashoned,

I invite
You Goddess, stand beside me, be my partner as i write
The Nature Of Things.... ~~
Meanwhile, Holy One, both on dry land and on the deep,
Make the mad machinery of war drift off to sleep.
For only you can favour mortel men with peace, Since Mars,
Mighty in Arms, who oversees the wicked works of wars,
Conquered by Love's everlasting wound, SO OFTEN LIES
UPON YOUR LAP, AND GAZING UPWARDS, FEASTS HIS GREEDY EYES
ON LOVE, HIS MOUTH AGAPE AT YOU, FAMED GODDESS, AS HE TIPS
BACK HIS SHAPLEY NECK, HIS BREATH HOVERING AT YOUR LIPS.
AND AS HE LEANS UPON YOUR HOLY BODY, AND YOU REACH
YOUR ARMS AROUND HIM, LADY, SWEET TALK HIM WITH HONEYED
SPEECH,
PLEADING FOR A QUITE PEACE FOR ROMANS- THIS I ASK
FOR I CANNOT WITH EASY MIND PERFORM MY CHOSEN TASK,
Nor can the noble secion of the Memmii fail to heed
The call to duty, WHEN OUR LAND IS IN HER HOUR OF NEED....

~~For I now begin to make
My discourse on the lofty law of gods and heaven above,
And shall reveal the building blocks all things are fashoned of,
Nature's prime particles, from which she nourishes and grows
All things, and into which once more she makes them
decompose~~

from LUCRETIUS: The Nature Of Things

posted January 16, 2013 05:04 PM            

Thanks, you made me appreciate where I am a little more. This area is also known for the Brandywine School painters. My favorite is N.C. Wyeth, who painted this:

His north node is conjunct mine. I also love Andrew Wyeth, whose birthday is the same as my son and niece's and Thoreau's. My husband got to meet Andrew on several occasions...they are good stories but way too long.

I'm more visually-oriented...I don't know why that is. The way you describe music moving your soul is like how I feel when looking at certain paintings or even well-illustrated children's books. I love music but don't seek it out so much. Maybe I was spoiled growing up, having my brother and sister playing piano very well in the house...I really prefer live sound.

But I think it's fabulous that you are so in touch with music, and I really enjoyed listening to the Adagio for Strings (I listened twice!) and reading your story about it.

Do you play any instruments yourself?

My husband is extremely sensitive to music as well (he's first generation Slovakian...there is a strong musical culture in the Czech Republic/Slovakia, I've read...virtually everyone plays an instrument...how happy!)

This conversation is making me miss my father-in-law who, as I said, knew Barber. He was also a great musician...used to play the trumpet for the Miss America pageants in Atlantic City...my mother-in-law wasn't exactly thrilled, I don't think. They were both Cancers.

Babbling now, and meandering way off topic...

Have a nice day!

@Venus and Cancer/Scorpio, thanks for posting poems! I have to get back and concentrate on them when I have a bit more time.

posted January 17, 2013 04:37 PM            

You have a special knack for drawing these things out? Love the 'atmosphere' being created... You have a way of touching the right places... Thankyou, kind Friend!

Thanks for sharing more about your life. How warm! Do you have your art in a gallery somewhere? Are you a teacher?

BTW, you and I have yet another connection... via the Wyeths! One day I'd stopped by for a brief visit with my parents and walked in to find Andrew, Jamie, and 'Helga' standing around the kitchen table! My dad and Jamie had been good friends...

I loved Jamie's work in particular, way before I met him. His work hung in various business offices around town. I recall the clarity in his artwork, and his attention to the tiniest 'details' even in his larger works. It was enthralling to me... I appreciated his use of 'light' as well -- Can you imagine the type of stillness, devotion, and concentration involved?, as though he only had to worry about one "postage-stamp" sized area at a time... All the tiniest nuances synergetically merged into the final product-- from the individual to largest details, in the overall view.

posted January 17, 2013 10:51 PM            

Your post touched me so deeply...I'm happy you didn't erase it! My goodness I think I will be writing some of the same things when I am older, if I can get the words to flow...latent talents I had that were never cultivated...regrets that all these little sparkles of genius (though I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek, in my case) and magic that I hoard up inside won't get recognized.

There is a great poem by Thomas Hardy that touches on this theme AND brings us back "on topic" (not that that matters to me, in the grand scheme of things!)

Afterwards

And of course, for all of us astrologers, this verse hits a little closer to home:

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
'He was one who had an eye for such mysteries'?

We just need an extra stanza in there, talking about music, for you. That's amazing how much you taught yourself piano, and how far you got with it! Though I'm sad that your parents didn't see how much it would have meant for you, to have their support. It seems tragic because it was such a fine, heartfelt goal, not like you wanted anything unreasonable.

You make me a little more grateful for my parents, who are deceased, but who get more of my respect every year it seems, as I struggle with raising my own children and doing everything "right" when I don't always have a clear sense of which way to go.

Anyway, like you I can relate to being interested in all kinds of subjects; I scatter myself too thin to accomplish anything grand in one area. I have a splash chart and it's obvious...if one knows how to notice what a splash-chart looks like when it comes to life, they would see all the tell-tale signs in my resume, history, pile of eclectic books...on and on.

To answer your question about art, I'm not a public artist at all. I draw cards for friends, drew a coloring book for my children and their friends, I draw bookmarks with my favorite quotes on them. I doodle therapeutically, a lot. It's all small-range and personal.

Though I do love Tasha Tudor...she is kind of my role model. Do you know her?

Now...have to say, I am totally FLOORED that you met the Wyeths and Helga! Dying to know more of the story, but I understand if you don't want to put personal info online.

There was a thread in LLC 2.0 "What would your avatar be for this forum?" and I posted Helga in Braids.

Jamie...hmmm...I'm very familiar with his work, his Pig, his Crow, Nuryev...something about him never clicked with me. I felt like, if I met him, he would brush me aside without taking a minute to realize something more was there than meets the eye. Whereas I felt, with Andrew, that he had a kind of spiritual vision. I used to daydream about meeting him and having him just stare at me a second...LOL as if this would make me an exalted person, just to catch his eye a second longer than other people.

You're the first person I ever told that to. =)

posted January 18, 2013 05:27 AM            

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

A Dream Within A Dream - Edgar Allen Poe

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

posted January 18, 2013 05:22 PM            

"Your post touched me so deeply...I'm happy you didn't erase it!" (oops! I did...) "My goodness I think I will be writing some of the same things when I am older, if I can get the words to flow...latent talents I had that were never cultivated...regrets that all these little sparkles of genius (though I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek, in my case) and magic that I hoard up inside won't get recognized. "

I DID decide to "shorten" the post. Thanks for so generously responding. I hope you take the all the risks that life presents you to express all that magic living inside your Being...

Love your imagination and language-- your "sparkles of genius" and the hoard of magical energies! So descriptive... You have the pen of a poet and writer! Your chart 'splays' it all out right in front of you.

Alas! mine didn't truly find its full expression... Oh! except maybe everywhere around here at LL where I've strewn musical urls... but then go back to 'cleanup' after myself, oftentimes. I'm perhaps a little too corny, too idealistic, too flowery... with the asteroids in my chart to prove it!

And so, I leave this in your honor for the love and work of childhood, coloring books and markers...

Shumann:Scenes from Childhood [1:55] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlJT1FefvR4